Rich, sassy and pleasurable, with ripe fruit. Great texture and good balance...

...test the superlative qualities of California's La Crema Pinot Noir.

Moderately intense aromas of sweet, oak-enriched cherries and decently concentrated flavors of similarly sweet ad slightly spicy fruit make for lots appeal. The wine is smooth, fleshy and somewhat lush in palatefeel and comes with a persistant, fairly open finish.

A week earlier, I had stopped at La Crema Winery...and I saw one of the most exciting products on the shelf for value...One of the wines, a 1999 vintage wine called Nine Barrels, costs $75 a bottle, and it's one of the best new pinots I have yet tasted.

Intricate flavors and excellent balance indicate highly skilled handling of top class grapes.

Warm fruit, well balanced, nice chewy tannins. Very good wine.

Slightly stewed, boiled fruit nose. Warm fruit, balanced, nice chewy tannins, firm and structured. This will keep very well. Very good wine.

Dusty spice, brushy herbaceousness and dried cherry notes are the essential themes of this medium-bodied Pinot Noir...the wine's flavors are quite clean...

From the Russian River Valley, this pinot noir has distinctive black cherry flavors and tantalizing spice.

Menthol and herbal notes dominate, with underlying crisp red currant flavors.

dry, medium-bodied, medium tannin, medium acidity; A lovely wine full of dried-cherry flavor, with some notes of bitter herbs and a bit of smokiness.

Simple, with red currant and dried berry flavors.

Bright berry flavors with medium tannins and wonderful tangy acidity.

Appealing aromas of oak and cherry. A burst of strawberry on the palate, bright and ripe. Vibrant.

Medium red. Deeply pitched aromas of raspberry, chocolate, tobacco and earth. Vinous, textured and quite dry, with good texture and fairly substantial alcohol. Comes across as more tannic than the '99 which may be lower in acidity.

"Medium, dry, Bright raspberry and black currant aroma, spicy backnote; luscious fleshy flavors, good tannins, big fruit, good length. Value."

Although suggesting a wine of size and fruity extract in the nose, this young, medium-full-bodied working is not quite so generous in the mouth, yet its cherry-like qualities provide a clear and inviting varietal stamp.

With great fruit from the Russian River Valley, this pinot is deeply colored and has a rich black cherry fruit.

…oak and a touch of dusty spice overly subdued elements of lightly herbal, mildly cherryish fruit first in the low-keyed aromas and then again in the open, slightly rich flavors of this mid-sized Pinot.

Any Pinot Noir fan will quickly find that this wine, just now coming into supermarkets nationwide, is classically silky, with deep plum flavors and a soft vanilla taste. Clearly, this is not a wine anybody should miss, especially at this price. Suggested retail is $15, but you're sure to find it around $10 on special.

Vanilla spice and richly flavored dark cherry fruit. Still youthful

Rich, fine, sweet red fruits on the nose and vanilla spice with richly flavored dark cherry fruit and a sweet middle.

Ripe blackcurrant and sweet oak nose. Mouthfilling, ripe, sweet blackcurrant fruit with a smoky complexity.

"These two wines, [the reserve and the non-reserve] should, as often as it is possible, be purchased together and drunk back to back. Both are classic, cold climate Pinot Noirs that have amazingly aromatic noses, soft tannins and gobs of the blackberry, raspberry and cherry red fruit flavors that make this varietal almost the perfect accompaniment to any kind of dinner. There is a distinct nutty flavor imparted in both wines from its oak aging; 10 months for the reserve, 11 months for the non-reserve. The reserve offers a denser structure with deeper flavors;...